General

Well 8 hour sleep would be best obv since then you will get in your REM sleep as said before, you will be mentally and physically rested in this part of the sleep, you wont get to this part when its a 4 hour nap. You can just take ur night rest and then have a short nap at daylight, seems to be effectfull too I heard.

Im not sure if I'm correct but I remember hearing from a person or seeing on a website that we actually rest while we're deep in sleep and our body recovers from our day's work during that deep sleep. This deep sleep takes a while to get into, not instantly. Like, say you fall asleep at 11pm, it might take until 11:30pm to get into your deep sleep. Therefore, if you have breaks in between your sleep, you will tend to be a bit more sleepy than you will from a straight 8 hour sleep. Not 100% sure about this though but i'd say 8hour sleep is still better

you mess up your sleep cycle/sleep waves, that's what. the usual circadian pattern is getting up during the day followed by gradually increasing sleepiness in the evening. if u were to take two naps at separate times, that would just throw off ur circadian rhythm.

Jeez some of you need to take a graduate level neuroscience class sometime

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Anyways, there are 2 major hypothesis that say either (1) during sleep synapses formed during the awake state are selectively strengthened or (2) unimportant synapses are selectively weakened. Regardless... the longer you sleep the deeper and more time you spend in REM sleep. Synaptic strengthening is hypothesized to occur in REM sleep, and synaptic weakening is proposed to occur in non-REM sleep.

So based on basic science, maybe your selective retention will decrease.

You have less energy throughout your awake time.

[url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJ_f9onTTQE]yay[/url]

Personally I never feel rested whether I sleep a full 8 hours or break up into naps and a 4 hour sleep or something
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r82yGH3LWho

well i dont get rest from naps
so if i nap from 3-10 i still go to bed at 11 bc tired
naps are bs wow

There are alternative sleep patterns that may or may not be better for some people.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep

[quote=GeminoLamini]Yes, you have to go through the god awful experience of waking up not once, but twice.[/quote]

I find joy in it because I wake up once.. then I just simply say "oh I still have time to sleep more!" rather than wake up at the exact hour and say "god dammit I have to get up now"
Two nap sessions work better for me because of that

I believe it can lead to being more tired.. something about not getting enough REM sleep, I think? I don't know, I didn't really pay attention when I was learning about this.

Yes, the fact that you're too sleepy to post in the right section